Endurance - Jeremiah's Vow

Lent 2023 | Day 32: The Gospel’s Zenith

Regardless of what we might understand at the outset of our journey of faith, God’s ultimate goal is to restore humanity to fellowship with him.

The word zenith was original used in reference to celestial bodies such as stars and planets. It marked the highest point reached as the object moved through the sky. In the course of time, it became a reference to any high point whether literal or metaphorical.

With this in mind, what is the Gospel’s zenith? What is the “highest point” we can identify on this journey of faith?

Regardless of what we might understand at the outset of our journey of faith, God’s ultimate goal is to restore humanity to fellowship with him. This goal will be attained at the culmination of all things.

Whether we think about it often or not, there is a powerful eschatological component to the Gospel. If you are not familiar with he word eschatological, it is in reference to what will happen at the end of time and Jesus returns.

For the Christian, the Gospel is the doorway into the Christian life. But the Gospel is also the ongoing pursuit of the Christian’s journey. There is nothing more important. Or at least there should not be.

As we continue to mature in our understanding of God’s grace; as we grow in our trust of God’s promises; as we endeavor to embody the example of Jesus in our own lives, we indicate that we are on the steady march toward God’s ultimate purpose. These serve as the markers of our progress toward that end.

If you are wondering what all this has to do with our Gospel focus, it’s this: the zenith of the Gospel is the eternal glory of all those who endure to the end. Jesus spoke of those who continue in faith in his warning and description of the events at the close of history in Matthew 24. Tucked away in that passage he offers this simple promise.

¹³But he who endures to the end shall be saved.
Matthew 24:13 NKJV

The world will put all manner of obstacles in our way. Some are the result of our own actions. Others impediments will be the result of the action of others. And the vast majority of them will be there because we live in a world deeply affected by sin.

Regardless of the reason, we are called to endure. To continue to hold onto the promises of God. To not allow the challenges of the world to keep us from marching toward God’s purpose.

The zenith of the Gospel is found in Jesus leading us into God’s presence. We experience some of that in passing moments here in this world. Some longer than others. But there will come a day when what comes and goes will come and stay.

I look forward to that day. And so should you.

Lent 2022 | Day 23: Days

⁸ But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
2 Peter 3:8 KJV

This verse in Peter’s second letter is interesting because of how it describes God. God does not experience the passage of time the same way that we do. It is been said that God is eternal. So, the very idea of “time” for God is probably nonsensical. But for us, that is a notion that we struggle to make sense of because our experience of time is not like that.

Peter says that one day for God is like “a thousand years” for us. And that a thousand years for us is as “one day” for God. That seems repetitive. And it is to a certain extent. What we must keep in mind is what this is describing. It is describing a relationship between how we perceive things and how God perceives things.

A thousand years ago the world look very different than it does today in the 21st century. The changes that have occurred in the last 100 years are more drastic than what happened in the previous 900 years. And we look back on that time and cannot fathom having to live in those circumstances or conditions. And this is the reality this verse is drawing our attention to.

There are so many times when I’ve had conversations about God’s timing. Why doesn’t God do this? Or why can’t God do that? These are fair questions from our perspective because we recognize that our lives will come to an end. And it’s this finite reality of life that causes us to want for God to act more quickly. What this reveals is a basic misunderstanding about God’s will for the world.

While God cares for us and desires for each of us to experience the fullness of his love and grace, there is a greater purpose for which God is at work. We do not always understand it. In many ways, we feel like we never will. But this does not change the fact that God’s will is God’s primary focus.

So, the feeling of frustration we feel when God seems to delay his activity or intervention is based on a presumption we should challenge. That presumption is that God is obligated to fulfill our requests when we asked them. But this is not the case. We must grow in our humble submission to God’s plan and purposes for the world.

The fact that for God one day is as a thousand years is a reminder that what God is doing he has been doing for a long time. And because God has been at work for far longer than we have existed we should not lose heart when we do not get what we ask for when or how we asked for it. We should remember that what God is doing will be of greater value to the whole of creation and to us individually than anything we could ever have imagined for ourselves.

As each day passes and as we draw closer to Easter morning I pray we would pause and remember God’s faithfulness endures. The fact that God’s timeline follows a longer arc than our own should give us comfort. But many of us have to learn to rest in that. And that takes time. Time is something God has more of than any of us. So he can wait on us to catch up to him.

Lent 2022 | Day 18: Endures

The focus of our thought today is the word endures.

This is an interesting word for at least two reasons. First, it conjures in my mind the idea of continued effort. We live in a world where we have instant access to information. Instant access to entertainment. Instant access to new friends made around the world. It would appear that our threshold for patience has been diminishing with the advancement of technology. This decrease in our ability to delay gratification has truly created a circumstance in which people seemingly cannot control their displeasure when what they want is not readily available.

When we as a group of people or as individuals are consumed by our own sense of entitlement we no longer fear or care about harming others in order to get what we want. This may seem like a dark and pessimistic view of the world. But I would disagree. If we accept what the Scripture tells us about the human heart, that is wicked (Jeremiah 17:9), that it is made of stone (Hebrews 8:10), and that it is deceitful we can calibrate our engagement with the world more consistently.

Second, the word endures serves as a reminder that the goal is not just around the corner. It is the difference between the proverbial marathon and sprint. This imagery is often used to describe the need for us to recognize that some goals will take time to achieve. It may seem a bit trite to some, but I find it helpful to remember that most things in life will not happen immediately.

The most important things in life will take time to do well.
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In the midst of the daily grind of living, we should not lose sight of the fact that the most important things in life will take time to do well. When we try to short-circuit the process of growing and maturing as individuals we invariably deny ourselves the wisdom that is earned in the process. The longer we cut corners the more difficult it becomes to grow.

The ever-growing tendency that we have to find the quickest and easiest route to where we’re going blinds us in ways we do not always anticipate. Every choice we make has consequences. And every consequence impacts the future choices we will make. This is why it is better to decide more slowly than to make quick decisions in the heat of the moment. When we are deliberate in our decision-making process we create the room we need in order to achieve the goals we have set. This is not a guarantee, but it does improve our chances of success.

In this season of Lent, we are called to a time of self-denial for a period of 40 days. In that time we may find ourselves trying to get out of the burden of it. But if we convince ourselves that this is just an arbitrary activity we will have proven to ourselves that we have not understood what it means to endure. Just because something can be classified as mundane or ordinary does not mean that it cannot have a lasting effect.

As we continue toward Easter morning take this time to ask yourself why you should choose to endure?

Lent 2022 | Day 5: Walk

One of the many images we find as it relates to the Christian life is the image of walking with Jesus. While Jesus was on the earth the primary mode of getting around from place to place was that of walking. So it should not surprise us that walking can serve as an important illustration of how we should think of the Christian life.

I find it interesting how walking with God is often framed in a particular direction. We are walking towards heaven, or to some purpose or mission. Our assumptions about walking with God are usually connected to the destination. But what if this is all wrong? What if that is not what God had in mind when he invites us to walk with him?

As Christians, walking with Christ is a challenge, but it is not a challenge that Jesus wants us to fail.
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When we talk about walking with God we should probably think about this relationship with God as walking at a particular pace. What that means is we should not be too hurried or too inclined to drag behind.

When we walk with someone we have to try to match their pace. It is usually the person who has greater stamina who makes the adjustment for the person with lesser stamina. What this means for us as Christians is that even though walking with Christ is a challenge, it is not a challenge that Jesus wants us to fail. The longer we walk with him the greater our endurance becomes. The less taxed we feel by the endeavor.

The second idea we should consider when thinking about walking with Jesus is the idea of awareness. We often take for granted the roadways and walkways we have access to in our modern communities. And while there may have been roads in the ancient world they were not constructed from materials providing a smooth surface. Even with cut stone, the roadways would still have had contours and texture.

In a way, as we talk about walking with Jesus we should be mindful of the fact the places we will go and the terrain we must travel will require an increased awareness. The unevenness of the ground, and the potential roots and holes that could trip us up, are all hazards we must keep an eye out for. In the same way that this is true in the natural world, the same kinds of hazards exist in the spiritual world.

The journey we take with God as we walk with Christ requires we do not take as an assumption that we will be traveling along safe and maintained avenues. To walk with God is to walk a dangerous path. Not because God wants to see us harmed but because life in a fallen world will always have the potential for peril at any turn.

Even Jesus warned us to be mindful when we went out into the world to fulfill God’s purpose in our lives. Whether we want to accept it or not, one of the undeniable realities of the human experience is that there will be trials, and for some of us, there will be tribulations. It does not matter whether we expected it or not, we can endure it with God’s help. No one will ever live a trouble-free life, no matter how hard we would like to avoid it, life leaves us no alternative.

While this may seem dark and even pessimistic to some I take a different view. The fact that Jesus himself endured the difficult journey of life, gives me an enduring hope that regardless of what life may throw at us we can know that not only can it be survived but we can thrive in the midst of what comes. This may sound counterintuitive. Even a little “pie-in-the-sky” for some. But I am not basing this on my ability to make it. I am grounding my hope in God’s capability to bring me through whatever circumstances I may find myself in.

As we continue on the steady march toward Easter morning, I would encourage you to take some time this week, to get outside and take a short stroll (or even a long one), and spend some time reflecting on what your journey with Christ has looked like up to this point. And if there is anything you feel impressed by the Holy Spirit to change I would encourage you this take a step of faith in that new direction.

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No shortcuts to a deeper relationship with God

I subscribe to a website that shows you when e-books get discounted. One day, one of the books on sale was related to discipleship and being able to increase the depth of discipleship in a short amount of time. While on the surface this does not appear to be a problem. I found that the more I thought about it, the less I liked what it was saying about the discipleship process.

What do I mean? It makes me uncomfortable to think people are trying to short-circuit the discipleship process in their lives.

The reason for this is there is no shortcut to a deeper level of discipleship. There is no quick way of growing in intimacy with God. And to think that there is we put ourselves on a path toward self-deception. A path that leads to spiritual harm and weakness. Discipleship is a journey. It is a journey that takes time and endurance in order to achieve the ultimate goal.

This raises an interesting question: What is the ultimate goal of discipleship?

I believe the ultimate goal of discipleship is a deep and abiding relationship with God. That’s it. That’s the whole of it.

tThe ultimate goal of discipleship is a deep and abiding relationship with God. That's it. That's the whole of it.

That relationship with God cannot be achieved by taking shortcuts. Now, I know that the book and other books like it are not trying to necessarily give the reader the impression it is possible to have a deep relationship with God in a short amount of time. However, that was the effect it had on me. And I have been maturing in my understanding of discipleship for over 20 years.

The fact that we struggle in our discipleship journey does not mean there is not some redemptive purpose in it. None of us likes to struggle. None of us likes to think there is a measure of suffering we all must endure. But life does not always come wrapped in a tight little bow.

Sometimes life is messy. In other times it can be downright vicious. But in spite of whatever comes at us in this life, we will do all we can to look towards what God has promised and not merely what we hope for him to fulfill at our request.

In my own life discipleship has often been costly. The reason for the cost of true and lasting discipleship is it requires us to sacrifice something we would normally never consider we could sacrifice. And what is that? We are called to sacrifice our very lives.

The reason for the cost of true and lasting discipleship is it requires us to sacrifice something we would normally never consider we could sacrifice.
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This is the very thing Jesus does in his own example to us. Jesus enters into the world and he lives a life among people who do not understand who he truly is. He lives among people who only see someone who can bring them out of their own suffering and into what they believe is a life of abundance. But not the spiritual kind of abundance God desires to give. But the kind of abundance that says we are supposed to be rich in the world’s treasures. But Jesus says he has come to give us life and that life to the fullest.

I think what troubled me the most about books that promise to give us special insights and a quicker route to a deeper relationship with God is it offers something that not even God has promised to us. God calls us into a deeper relationship with him through his son Jesus Christ and invites us to live all eternity with him. Too often we find this invitation to be too far off. And so what we do, we look for ways to help God give us what we desire. But it’s not something we desire according to God’s purposes. It is what we desire according to our own.

I think one of the great challenges of the Christian faith is trusting in God’s timing. Learning to rely upon God to bring us to those moments and places he has determined are for our greatest good.

And so we need to learn to be patient. We need to learn to be more trusting. We need to learn to be more content with what God is giving us rather than looking for a “get holy quick scheme.”

Lent 2019 | Day 15: The Endurance of Obedience

Obedience becomes easier AND harder the longer we commit to it.

We have addressed various challenges and difficulties with obedience over the last week. Today I want to talk about one of the most important aspects of living an obedient life. That attribute is endurance.

We may not always think of endurance as being related to obedience. I will admit I did not until recently. What I have realized is that obedience becomes easier AND harder the longer we commit to it. I want to speak to both of these.

I want to touch on the issue of obedience becoming harder first. The reason is that I want to expose something I have encountered in my own faith journey. As I have tried to become more intentional in my obedience, and by this I mean more aware of it (my tendency has usually been to behavior compliance, which I think is quite normal in the church of the twenty-first century), I have realized that what I thought made obedience difficult was not the command I was confronted with.

What makes obedience hard is the separation between our intentional awareness and our move toward passive compliance. Obedience, in order to be properly called obedience, must be active and something we conscientiously engage in. When we are intentional we are taking thoughts captive; we are seeing the goodness of God around us; we are not letting life happen to us, but we are actually living the life Christ secured for us on the cross.

On the other side, the longer we endure it becomes easier because we see God’s faithfulness in sustaining us. We become witnesses to how the power of sin has been broken and how we can see victory when we trust in the Lord’s wisdom. Obedience stops being a burden and becomes one of our great delights.

To see obedience as a joy that pleases our Heavenly Father and brings satisfaction to our souls comes when we persevere. Through the difficulties and the obstacles, we endure because we have become convinced that our obedience is both what God requires, but also what God desires. And because he desires it we please him when we obey.

I want to encourage you to strive for obedience. You will find more joy on the other side than you thought possible.